Three months ago, about a year and a half after I bought my HP laptop and 3-year service warranty, two out of three SCSI ports just stopped working. I brought my computer -my lifeline, my means of making a living — to Computer World to have them fix these ports. Simple enough, right? Some (really) young kid at the service desk, with the personality of a tissue, tells me that my entire motherboard needs to be replaced. It will take two weeks to be repaired and I need to back up all my files because while they’re replacing this “motherboard�? files could get erased or lost. Two weeks!?

Here’s a suggestion for your next book group: an email mystery called “Daughters of Freya.�? What’s an email mystery you ask? It’s a story told through a series of emails from different characters sent to your inbox, “as if the characters copied you on the emails they are sending each other.�? You receive a four to five a day over a three week period, leaving you unable to skip ahead to find out what happens. There are also links to newspaper and magazine articles, detective reports, photographs and other items that contain clues to the mystery. Intrigued? Not yet? The story synopsis might reel you in.

What every website needs: a real-time customer satisfaction index.

More praise of the unsolicited, well-timed customer service apology.

Two examples (one good and one, well, not good) of customer communications.